Saudi Arabia is one of the members of United Arab Emirates (UAE) countries whose main language is Arabic with Islam being their main religion. The Saudi citizens are willing or they desire to communicate to their visitors who goes there as tourists, on business trips or any other legal activity but they face many challenges on their attempt to communicate to them.
Some of these challenges include language barriers and ethnocentrism. Most visitors communicate in English but since the Saudis’ are native speakers of Arabic language, they cannot communicate in English thus becoming one of their key challenges.
The Saudi people normally face such judgments from other people particularly their visitors who feels uncomfortable associating with them due to the difference in social life, cultures and society (Gudykunst & Kim, 1992).
Therefore, these citizens are willing to communicate to the visitors, but they despised especially the foreigners who run businesses in Saudi, as well as the international organization personnel present in the country. The aim of this context is to examine what makes the Saudi citizens desire to communicate to their visitors; their intercultural willingness to communicate (IWTC), ethnocentrism barrier and language barrier.
Intercultural Willingness to Communicate (IWTC)
People have a general tendency to approach or keep away from communication. Intercultural willingness to communicate means that the Saudi citizens are enthusiastic to put aside their differences in cultural backgrounds and give their visitors a warm welcome as well as communicate to them in an effective way (MacIntyr et al, 2003).
It also demonstrates why an individual will communicate while another one will not under similar culture. Since intercultural willingness to communicate is an appreciated behavior, the Saudi citizens are very right to practice it because it can enable some of them create healthy relationships with visitors from different parts of the world.
Moreover, IWTC can also help them appreciate other cultures even when they go to foreign countries because they may be willing to embrace it and thus blend well with the citizens of such countries.
Unwillingness to communicate conversely is described as a constant tendency to prevent and or de-appreciate oral communication. One of the main reasons for not being able to communicate is fear. Communication anxiety is the level of an individual’s fear or uneasiness connected with either authentication or expected communication with another individual or people.
Generally, it is stated in several studies that connect high communication apprehension (CA) to lower self-esteem and fewer favorable opinions from others, CA in students of various countries has been associated with minimization of recall, increased rates of dropouts and lower general GPA in college (Hackman & Barthel-Hackman, 1993).
Therefore, it is now clear that the unwillingness to communicate has negative impacts on individual life of people from different races, cultures and backgrounds as well as adults, young people and students. This means that IWTC initiates communication between people from distinct races, and cultures, and thus it seems to be a heuristic factor that can be measured with the gadget established in several studies.
The present study is centered on supposition that high degrees of intra-cultural WTC do not essentially transform into high degrees of IWTC. The outcome from the study shows that the two structures associated only partially reinforcing this possibility (Kassing, 1996).
Differentiating between the two structures encourages the possibility that individuals who readily commence communication with members of their own group, society and or culture may not essentially be enthusiastic to do so in encounters of intercultural communications.
Saudi citizens desire to communicate to their visitors who visit them. If one citizen becomes intra-cultural willing to communicate means, he or she is able to communicate and associate well with individuals from his, or her own culture and social background. This citizen may associate and communicate well with the visitors or make friends from foreign countries because of fear that he or she develops (Gudykunst & Kim, 1992).
A Saudi citizen who has intercultural willingness to communicate, on the other hand, is able to associate well with visitors from different parts of the world and able to make many friends from foreign countries because he or she does not have any fear and contains high levels of communication comprehension.
The best way to adapt the intercultural willingness to communicate to visitors is by adapting robust behavioral measures, values and remain in a position to speak English which is the universal language used by most tourists, business people and international organizations personnel.
This also depends on the social life and extent of knowledge an individual has because if an individual is not well exposed to certain things or ways of life, he or she may not communicate well with the visitors (Hackman & Barthel-Hackman, 1993). For example, a visitor may visit Saudi Arabia as a tourist to view natural beauties and historical sites present in Saudi.
Since the visitor is from the western world possessing western culture, say she is a woman and during a hot, sunny day, she decides to wear light clothes like a bikini with no any other clothes.
The Saudi people may be amazed and because they are not used to such cultures and modes of dressing, be distorted psychologically, and mentally disturb thus be unable to communicate effectively. This is where fear comes in, and thus the value of intercultural willingness to communicate (IWTC) fades away and low communication comprehension develops.
That example is a good depiction of intra-cultural willingness to communicate because, in this case, the Saudi citizens may develop a negative attitude towards the Western Culture thus fails to embrace intercultural communication. Besides, the desire to communicate to visitors also fades away and fear develops.
Ambiguity is also another factor that arises in such a situation as it is also a limitation of the present scale. However, the most salient thing is that the Saudi citizens need to have exposure and be familiar with different cultures of the world so that they may embrace them when the visitors come into the country (MacIntyre et al, 2003).
This will also help them develop intercultural willingness to communicate (IWTC) and attain communication comprehension, which in turn, will help them develop strong friendships and relationships with individuals from foreign countries. Therefore, they need to let cultural differences put them at a distant with their visitors and make their desire to communicate to visitors fade.
Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism refers to the mode of criticizing another person or other people with reference to their lifestyles, social life, backgrounds, culture and race by comparing their standards with your own cultural standards (Neuliep, 2002).
This means that an individual may not socialize or communicate with other people or person due to the difference in standards of life as far as culture, society, race and individual’s background is concerned. Most individuals who practices ethnocentrism are self-centered people full of pride where they view themselves at a high level in comparison to others who may be down in terms competency, culture, race and background.
Therefore, individuals who practice ethnocentrism view themselves perfect and they assume that they can be excellent models for other cultures (Neuliep, Chaudoir & McCroskey, 2001). This is also another sensitive factor may affect the Saudi citizens because, they genuinely value their culture and they believe it is the best in comparison with other cultures in the world.
The experiences of these citizens are centered on what they understand about their culture to be their motivation for behavior. Note that this is not only practiced by the Saudi citizens but other individuals too because every person views his or her own culture as the best in comparison to the others (Lee, 1994).
Several people normally assume their behaviors to be normal and fail to acknowledge their own motivation and behavior. This makes most people view themselves as the best in everything they do without considering the fact that nobody is perfect. We normally perform the normal activities out of our own ethnocentric ideas without recognizing that they mislead us to some extent (Barraclough, Christophel & McCroskey, 1988).
We have observed in several occasions the stereotypes of people developing boundaries and chauvinism where they block other people from accessing their places and engaging into their cultural society (Brown, 2000). Take the Saudi citizens, for example, they cannot become typecasts, block their boarders and still state that they desire to communicate to their foreign visitors.
That is not possible because their ethnocentric notions cannot allow them to accept international visitors who are of a different race, community, background and culture (Gudykunst & Kim, 1992). In this case, they will often practice intra-cultural willingness to communicate where they only communicate with their own people who share the same culture with them.
This means that in order to possess intercultural willingness to communicate, they need to practice zero ethnocentrism, which means that they will not establish boundaries to keep away the international visitors instead; they welcome them and embrace them (Matveev, 2004).
Culture is usually recognized through such frontiers, which are depicted, as stereotypes, which in turn have been observed as being inflexible, and, in most cases, it opposes change in several cultural beliefs among young men and even adult (Kassing, 1996). Just as, mentioned, stereotype has the tendency of promoting intra-cultural and group homogeneity.
Thus, several nations are still not in a position to embrace change particularly in cultural issues. Moreover, communication comprehension is also scarce because, in most cases, it is fostered by IWTC (Barraclough, Christophel & McCroskey, 1988).
In Saudi, several adolescents develop without understanding or being aware of other cultural groups because they are taught everything using their culture thus remain insensitive and unaware of other cultures. When they become adults, they are deeply rooted to their own culture that they cannot be able to embrace other cultural groups.
This is why they desire to communicate to their international visitors but, they are unable because they cannot cope with other cultures and they are not ready to embrace them. The adolescents are brought up in ethnocentric habitats or communities who eventually develop elevated feeling of ethnocentric values. This in turn, leads to preconception and racist attitudes hence manipulating their IWTC (Arasaratnam & May, 2009).
Ethnic individuality appears to be at the vanguard of comprehending ethnocentrism and varied populations. Some researchers propose that multiculturalism is associated with self-awareness and racial realization of a positive approach among tutors, parents and administrators who pretense their notions of assortment to adolescents.
Parents who remain encompassed with ethnic individuality demonstrate standards leading to positive approaches in young adolescents. A cultural individuality can become an optimistic theme within a young person when the social-cultural background is made constructive (Myers & Boothe, 2000).
Therefore, in order for the Saudi citizens especially the adolescents to communicate effectively with international visitors and even create friendships, they need to learn and practice multiculturalism.
This will enable them to accept and adopt self-awareness and racial recognition that will foster them to have a positive view of other individuals from different cultural groups, and eventually develop a positive depiction of international visitors. In this way, they may learn different aspects of life from them and thus increase their multicultural knowledge.
Note that such adolescents may excel with their academic aspects and go for further studies in a foreign country. Multicultural factor can be of much help to them in foreign countries because no form of ethnocentric ideas would be in their minds (Brown, 2000).
Therefore, their association with the other students may be marvelous, and their intercultural willingness to communicate may increase as well as their communication apprehension (CA). Besides their competency in English language may also increase and thus visit any country and establish business because English is an international business language (Lee, 1994).
It is evident enough that these factors are interchangeable and linked to each other. IWTC is the first factor, which increases self-awareness and minimizes the availability of ethnocentrism. IWTC also increases English knowledge because through association and interaction of an individual with other people from different cultural groups and may be a foreign country enables them to learn English extensively.
Despite the fact that ethnocentrism is associated with negative nuances, it is also associated with positive benefits (Melewar et al, 2001). Ethnocentrism is normally compared with patriotism because it makes individuals overstate and strengthen everything in their own culture, which is weird and distinguishes them from other people.
In other words, ethnocentrism reinforces cultural values, which are vital in several ways especially in maintaining strong behaviors. Besides, ethnocentrism also fosters nationalistic pride as well as helping in-group development enabling better-behaved degree of group solidarity (Santos & Rozier, 2007).
Language
In Saudi Arabia, Arabic is the official language spoken by the entire population (28 million) of Saudi Arabia. English is also widely spoken by a small population of the country.
In most cases, English language is used in business fields because Saudi Arabia has several business associations with other European countries like France, Germany as well as the United States and thus the Arabians cannot communicate to these visitors in Arabic because English is the official global business language (Myers & Boothe, 2000).
Moreover, the Saudi schools are now teaching English as a compulsory second language in the country because it is the recognized international language. Several people in Saudi who are non-Saudi speak Urdu, which is the official language of Pakistan and some Asian languages like Turkish and Farsi.
The Saudi citizens have the desire to communicate to their visitors from different parts of the world, but they face many challenges such as being language barriers (Penington & Wildermuth, 2005).
Nowadays, the international programs like Quality, Health, Safety and Environment (QHSE) are just alternative superfluous (Canty, 2010). The level to which policies and systems are practical and varies massively from one organization to another and from culture to the other.
In United Arab Emirates particularly in Saudi, one of the main difficulties facing the Quality, Health, Safety and Environment teams is the key combination of nationalities which makes interaction and passage of QHSE policies even more complicated. While firms go on to expand their availability across the world, the differing degrees of understanding about QHSE become evident (Kim, 1991).
Even though, some countries including the United Arab Emirates and the UK have already applied the legislation to make sure that the least standard of health and safety must be obeyed to the fullest, this does not apply to several religions.
As a result of the unreliable standards of QHSE globally, firms must make sure that their own QHSE systems are conveyed to all employees, an assignment which requires absolute education progression (Canty, 2010).
Just as, mentioned above, the Saudi citizens have the willingness to communicate with visitors because, some of them are employees in these companies and different business fields but they are not able to communicate effectively with their fellow employees or employers because of language barriers (Arasaratnam & May, 2009).
It is not their wish not to be able to speak English because during their times in schools, English was not taught, and many of them were forced to move to the UK to learn it a second language. However, not all of them were privileged to move to the UK and thus they still face the same problems.
In the near future, these problems will no longer be there because Saudi schools are now teaching English as a compulsory second language (Canty, 2010). It was from the desire of its citizens to communicate to visitors that encouraged the Saudi government to implement such a marvelous initiative.
The business association between the United States and Saudi is exceptionally strong because they established business investment programs that enable the two nations to carry out interchangeable business (Brown, 2000). However, only a few of the Saudis enjoy such initiative because the language barrier, which makes them unable to communicate to their American friends, hinders most of them.
Americans head some of the companies and organizations like Health Centers present in Saudi, but, the majority of the employees are Arabian citizens who are significant workforce but they are not able to share their views, suggestions and problems to their bosses because of the language barrier (Bradford, L., Alle & Beisser, 2000).
Therefore, this proves that despite the fact that the Saudi citizens are willing to communicate to their visitors from foreign countries, they usually face problems communicating to them using the universal language.
Nevertheless, it is fascinating to note that the Saudi government took the right decision to introduce English language to their schools because that is a permanent solution to the language barrier in the country (Lin, Rancer & Lim, 2003).
Besides the Saudi government, the international bodies are also trying to help save the situation because they recognized the desire and willingness of Saudi citizens to communicate to their visitors and they came up with supportive measures (Canty, 2010). For example, the Power rental supplier Aggreko International is fully aware of this problem and it is fighting hard to come up with a solution.
The organization has been faring on well in several countries in Africa, Asia, Australia, South America and Central America but, it has not been finding it easy in the United Arab Emirates (Hecht, Collier & Ribeau, 1993). This means that standardization of QHSE system to the UAE workforce has not been easy.
The Aggreko International decided to model a QHSE system that can be embraced cross-culturally in different languages in order to cater for the needs of the Arabian individuals.
In identifying these concepts, the company has implemented measures to make sure the main messages are communicated to the involved parties, and that the significant procedures that have to be employed for production in the company are understood, it does not matter where they are being implemented.
One of the ways through which Aggreko conveys its QHSE messages and policies is through online portal, QHSE share point. Since these policies are portrayed in English language, a translation strategy is being implemented so that all items and materials are available in English, French, Chinese, Arabic, Spanish and Portuguese.
This brilliant strategy will enable the Saudi citizens to benefit fully from the organization because it is a significant divergence from the language barrier (Canty, 2010).
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